Localization for RTL Languages

June 20, 2016

Sometimes simply translating website content into another
language isn't enough. For many markets with complicated languages,
localization is an essential aspect of website translation.
Non-Latin characters, right-to-left (RTL) languages, and text
expansion are some of the factors which must be considered for
languages like Chinese, Arabic and German.

Arabic, a popular RTL language, is the
4th most spoken language, with 26 Arabic-speaking
countries. Other RTL languages include: Hebrew, Persian and
Urdu.

In this blog, I will cover some tips for localizing RTL
languages.

Quick Tips

1. Add "dir=rtl" to the HTML tag, this leads to
right-aligned text and mirror-imaging of things like page and table
layout, which cascades down through all the elements on the page.
There is also a CSS direction property that changes the text flow
of block level elements and text but does not affect the layout of
the page.

Direction "dir" also specifies the directionality of tables.

When direction is used for tables, it displays as below:

2. Mirroring your layout means that things on the left should be
on the right and vice versa. This includes floats,
::before and ::after elements,
margins and padding.

3. Use the UTF-8 (Unicode) character encoding for content,
databases, etc.

4. Fonts and characters: Arabic characters are wider and shorter
than Latin characters, which gives a different visual
appearance.

5. If you are going to use the same web font for all pages, make
sure it is compatible with all of them.

6. Create a stylesheet for each direction.

7. If you have hardcoded words in your pages, keep them in
separate translation files.

Summary

While RTL is a rich topic and there is more to cover, this
article acts as the basic knowledge you need to start exploring RTL
confidently. RTL is not about "flipping" or "translating" content,
it's about making every aspect of the UI and layout
RTL-friendly.

Further Resources on Arabic Localization, Arabic
Globalization and Arabic SEO

Globalization Partners International (GPI) has extensive
experience localizing marketing materials, technical documents, and
large, scalable websites into the Arabic language. Due to increased
demand for projects in Arabic and other BiDi languages, like Farsi,
we have posted a number of useful guides to best practices in this
area. Feel free to review our blogs that are particularly
relevant:

Please feel free to contact GPI at info@globalizationpartners.com
with any questions about our language and technology
services. Also let us know if you have any interesting blog
topics you would like us to cover in our future blogs. You
may request a complimentary Translation
Quote for your projects as well.

Comments

Rabab Malek - Senior Global Application DeveloperRabab is a native Arabic speaker from Cairo, Egypt. She has over 12 years’ experience in software and websites architecture and implementation using open source programming tools including PHP, MySQL as well as jQuery, JSON and Ajax. She has served with various companies including Pyramid Technologies, Link-Dot-Net and InTouch Communications as a Programmer, Systems Engineer – Developer and Lead Web Developer.
She earned her B.Sc. Degree in Economics with a minor in Computer Science from Cairo University. She completed a SSDP Diploma from the Information Technology Institute (IDSC), The Cabinet and is a certified Cloud Business Associate and a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP, MCAD and MCSD.NET)
Over the years she has designed and implemented a range of localized web-based business applications and portals for clients in the finance, hospitality, telecommunications and e-commerce sectors.
In her free time she enjoys, traveling, reading, swimming, tennis and outdoor activities.